Our financial situation - Your opinion?

Such a lump sum mainly sounds like overinsurance, old tariffs, cancellation forgetters (liability insurance for a long-dead dog, household contents of the student apartment still insured today ...).

It also seems very high to me. We are at just over €1,500 per year (!) (household contents, building, liability, one car, supplementary health insurance, travel health insurance). Or are you both private patients?

Only the point about the company car:
I also have a company car, and since I have a 30 KM commute each way, the amount I have to pay in taxes as a monetary benefit pretty much exactly corresponds to the amount I would have to spend on maintaining my own vehicle. Just do the math to see how much it shifts in your favor net-wise because of the company car. The gross list price of a solid A4 or something like that is not exactly low either.

Arrange home office with your boss. Then the monetary benefit for the commute is reduced to €0. You just have to be creative.

Such a lump sum mainly sounds like overinsurance, old tariffs, cancellation forgetters (liability insurance for a dog that has been dead for ages, household contents of the student apartment still insured today ...).

The original poster mentioned several pension insurances. Privately, of course, almost any amount can be planned upwards for this.

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback! First of all: this is really not meant to be a fishing-for-compliments thread. Mainly, I opened this thread for my husband, who doesn’t even read the forum and also doesn’t have any feeling for other financing options.


You bring up an absolutely valid point: the financing CURRENTLY NEEDS two incomes. Not necessarily two full incomes, but one alone might be too tight. Even if in two years we are back on par with salary (so both would have 4,500€ net), then one employee can hopefully get to about 5k net with clever tax classes and child on the tax card, etc. Of that, fixed costs for the house (installment / ancillary costs) are about half. Anyone who can’t manage to provide for a family of three on 2,500€ per month has fundamentally done something wrong in life anyway. I totally agree! It would just not be what we are financially used to and what would scare us.
Our house construction starts this year in November, the child is due at the end of December – so full action in 2022 :-)
We are basically building our current house in the garden, which brings a huge advantage, not only because of the child.


We have a very interesting offer from the Commerzbank. It is not a classic annuity loan, but an interest and installment guarantee model. It works like this: a 10-year full repayment loan is taken out for about half of the loan amount at 0.4%. From the 11th year, a home savings contract with 1.25% kicks in. Interesting model and unfortunately I can’t explain it very well without writing novels.
But here are the key data: loan 550k, installment 2,230€, total costs (interest and home saver fees) 68k. Term 23 years, so fixed installment until the end, prepayment is possible but not necessary. In this model, the installment cannot be lower, the requirements/guidelines are 400€ rate per 100k loan.
In comparison to the annuity loan: 20 years, interest at 0.99%, installment approx. 2,000€, but after 20 years still 140k residual debt on the books. By year 20, 75k in interest has been paid, up to the calculated end of term after 26 years it is 79k (assuming interest remains at 0.99% for 20 years).
When I compare the two variants, I have the lower installment with the annuity loan (difference 230€), but the residual debt and no fixed interest rate until the end, and in total about 11k more expense paid.
My husband cannot live with the annuity model at all. He says the thought of the high residual debt would keep him awake at night. Unfortunately, he does not feel financially secure as we actually could. Hence this thread. I warned him that we might also trigger a wave of outrage because of these ‘luxury problems’. Your comment and the likes also show this in a very nice way.


Yes, I had already thought that you would definitely understand me. You also got to the point: the thread serves the (so far received) encouragement and the also received sensitization for the installment amount, term, the hint about a salary, etc.


Exactly, the insurances included home savings contracts among other things, which we have now cashed out and are using the money as equity. Most of it goes into retirement and is now being reduced. The idea was always: as much as possible into retirement and cut back on the house construction.


All insurances here are so uptodate ;-) As I said: most goes into retirement and went into the home savers (well over half of this amount).


Thanks for the tip about the company car. I would still prefer it to my own car if the costs were the same. No more insurance, no repairs, damages are covered. So far we have one car and get along great. We would only take a second one because of the little one and the driving. But only if both work. So it’s a cost factor that only arises if at least double money comes in.

Thanks for your feedback. I didn’t want to offend anyone here either. Sometimes you just need that last push ;-) Although that is more for my husband than for me :-D

Arrange with your boss to work from home. Then the taxable benefit for the commute is reduced to €0. You just have to be creative.

There remain the 1% for private use and home office would have to be 100% of working time. Last year we had the tax office at the company, which recorded all license plates in the company parking lot every day for a month and then checked. In individual cases, a logbook can still reduce costs, or if the company does not lease the vehicle but buys it (which is the case in our company). Then the taxable benefit is capped at the actual costs incurred, which has a very strong effect at the latest at the end of the depreciation period.

@ YPSI from NI: That's how I see it too. I find it very convenient not to have to worry about repairs and wear and tear, not to have to set aside savings for the car. It is also simply convenient to leave the car key at the company reception in the morning and to have the car freshly serviced by the end of the workday.